Windmill Impact Monitor

Inventor: Paul FucileSerial #: 61/903,162

Applications: Outdoor installation of heavy mechanical equipment may negatively impact the environment by producing noise, vibrations, and light or shadows. Currently available technologies to assess impact across these modalities tend to be uni-modal, handheld, weather-intolerant, and unable to take persistent, calibrated, time-stamped readings. The Woods Hole Multi-modal Environmental Impact Monitor facilitates the moment to moment coordinate evaluation of impact over time. Typical installations include placement of one or more units at critical locations near terrestrial wind turbines or near transportation centers (e.g. airports, rail-yards, highways). Potential markets include Wind Energy, Environmental Regulation, Protection, Litigation, and City and Facility Planning.

Technology: Fully integrated solid state sensor package for temporary or permanent field installation. This sturdy all-weather instrument package simultaneously and continuously measures ground-coupled vibration, optical changes (shadow and flicker), and low frequency (infrasonic) acoustic emissions. Each unit has onboard data storage capability, USB output, and networking capability. Data is recorded in a uniform and traceable monitoring protocol for the production of a reliable standardized data set. Working prototypes have been fabricated and are in use. Other options include a narrow band EM field monitoring and a submersible version for marine use.

Last updated: December 31, 2014

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